Whether you’re planning a very special trip next year or just travel a lot, there’s currently a limited-time offer you really ought to think seriously about. The Discover it® Miles-Double Miles your first year card is effectively offering double miles for the first year after new cardholders (but not existing ones) open their accounts.

Here’s how it works: After the first consecutive 12 billing periods that your new account is open, Discover will double all the miles you’ve earned and apply them to your account in the next billing cycle. Cardholders earn 1.5x miles per dollar spent on purchases, then double all the miles you’ve earned at the end of the first year.

A good travel rewards card This would be of less interest were the Discover it Miles not a pretty good travel rewards card already. But it is, because:

You can fly any airline at any time — with no blackout dates.

You can redeem any number of miles you want, from one up, at any time.

You can redeem miles against travel purchases made on the card within the previous 180 days. These travel purchases include airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, travel agents, online travel sites and commuter transportation.

You can also redeem miles for cash as an electronic deposit to your bank account.

It has no annual fee.

There are no foreign transaction fees.

Discover pays you back for your in-flight Wi-Fi fees (up to $30 a year) with an automatic statement credit.

There’s no cap on the miles you can earn.

Rewards never expire, although Discover will credit your account with your rewards balance if your account is closed or has not been used in 18 months.

You get a 0 percent APR introductory rate on purchases for 12 months (then a variable purchase APR applies, currently 10.99-22.99 percent, based on creditworthiness).

There’s no fee for your first late payment, and paying late won’t increase your APR.

All this, and Discover has just introduced the Freeze ItSM on/off switch, which lets you prevent new purchases, cash advances and balance transfers on misplaced cards in seconds by mobile app & online.

Getting the most out of this offer If you’re planning a big trip and want your rewards to cover part of the cost, you’re probably going to want to use your card for most or all your travel and non-travel purchases prior to departure. The tricky bit is timing when you buy your tickets and pay for other upfront travel-related expenses.

Remember, you can only use rewards to pay or partially pay for travel items purchased within the previous 180 days. Discover doubles all the miles you’ve earned in your first year during your 13th billing cycle, so depending on the timing of your plans and the purchases you make on the card, there may be a bit of a gap when it comes to redeeming all of your miles.

One possible solution is to buy tickets and so on less than six months before you travel, taking advantage of the Discover it Miles card’s zero percent introductory APR. That way, you can avoid interest and maximize the contribution your points make to the final cost — although you are going to have to make at least minimum payments during the months between buying the tickets and redeeming the rewards. Ideally you probably want to clear the balance during that 13th billing cycle, which is not only when your bonus rewards become available, but also when the variable APR kicks in.

By all means use your card while you’re on your trip to build up more rewards, and provide triggers (hotel bills, car rental, rail tickets …) for other rewards redemptions. After all, it doesn’t charge the foreign transaction fees — typically 3 percent — that many cards do.

However, you should note one possible drawback. This concerns Discover’s acceptance by merchants in certain countries. You need to check the map on the company’s website before you travel to make sure your card’s going to work at your destination. Oh, and don’t forget to call Discover with your itinerary details before you set off or there’s a good chance your international activity will set off fraud alarms and see your plastic temporarily frozen.

Not looking for a travel card? There’s no doubt the Discover it® Miles-Double Miles your first year is currently exceptional, but not everyone’s on the hunt for a travel rewards card.

Indeed, you may find cash back more desirable than miles, in which case you probably should explore Discover’s other offerings. Discover is currently offering to double all the cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year automatically (again, only for new cardmembers) on cards including:

Discover it®-Double Cash Back your first year

Discover it® card-Double Cash Back your first year

Discover it® chrome for Students-Double Cash Back your first year

As always with credit cards, the trick is to match the plastic available to your personal requirements, desires and spending patterns.

Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the credit card offers that appear on this site are from companies from which ConsumerismCommentary.com receives compensation. Compensation may impact which cards we review and write about and how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). We recognize that our site does not feature every card company or card available on the market.

It’s the heart of the baseball season and, whereas 20 years ago talk about the sport would have centered on the All-Star Game, the trade deadline, and how the pennant races were shaping up, now the chatter is filled with terms like “Wins Above Replacement” and “Defense-Independent ERA.” For better or worse, advanced metrics have taken hold in baseball.

What is interesting about the transformation of so many sports nuts into statistics geeks is that Americans don’t generally apply the same quantitative rigor to their household finances. That’s a shame, because finance is far more suited to statistical analysis than baseball, and the right set of numbers can give you a clear, objective view of your financial condition. For example, here are a dozen metrics that could give you some valuable financial insight:

Wage growth. Obviously, how much you make is important, but the rate of change tells you where you are headed. If your wage growth is not keeping pace with inflation, then you are headed in the wrong direction. In contrast, if your wage growth is up in the high-single digit percentage range, you should be on your way to a wealthier future, even if you still have a ways to go at the moment.

Total compensation growth. While your wages have the most immediate impact on your lifestyle, don’t neglect the importance of benefits — things like 401(k) matching contributions, healthcare benefits, and other extras your employer might provide. People tend to take these benefits for granted when they have them, but they certainly miss them when they don’t. So, you should factor benefits into the value of any compensation package. Nationally, the total compensation growth rate fell to a low of 1.4 percent shortly after the Great Recession, but recently recovered to a six-year high of 2.6 percent, which is still somewhat meager.

After-tax growth. While pre-tax compensation measures how much you earn, it is after-tax compensation that really affects your lifestyle. If after-tax growth is lagging badly behind pre-tax growth, think about what you could do (e.g., tracking deductions better, moving to an area with lower taxes) to stop taxes from taking an ever-growing bite out of your income.

Spending growth. It’s bad enough if you have trouble making ends meet now; but if your spending is growing faster than your after-tax income, then you are on course for real trouble.

Savings growth. This is a reality check for the income and spending growth measurements. If income appears to be growing faster than spending, you should check to see if this is showing tangible results in the form of an increasing rate of savings growth.

Current net worth. An important measure of your financial progress is to tally up the current net value of everything you own. Two things to remember about doing this. First, the “net” part of this is very important — you have to subtract the amount of debt you owe from the value of any assets. Second, when you consider the value of any tax-deferred retirement savings, keep in mind you are likely to have to pay taxes on those savings when you ultimately access them.

Net worth growth rate. Financially, where you are now is often less important than where you are heading and the rate at which you are getting there.

Debt-to-income ratio. Having some debt can be a normal part of financial management, but the larger that debt grows to be relative to your income, the more you risk it getting out of control.

Debt-to-asset ratio. On a net worth basis, there may be little difference between having virtually no assets or debt on the one hand or having a large asset value offset by an equally large debt burden. However, the latter is riskier, because a setback in the value of your assets could suddenly leave you with a significantly negative net worth.

Retirement savings rate. The percentage of your income you put aside for retirement savings may start out small early in your career, but you should strive to get it into the double digits by the time you reach 30.

Projected retirement income. Use a retirement calculator to project what retirement income your savings program would produce. This will give you a glimpse of the lifestyle you are on track for at your current pace.

Projected retirement income gap. If your projected retirement income does not seem adequate for the lifestyle you want, measure how far it falls short and start to figure out how to close that gap.

No one statistic is the answer to assessing how healthy your finances are. Instead, these statistics are pieces of a mosaic giving you a glimpse at part of the picture. If sports fans these days can spend so much time obsessing over statistics, a little quantitative examination of your finances now and then shouldn’t be too big a burden.

Twelve years ago today I started a blog called Consumerism Commentary. On that date, I was about one year into my journey of improving my finances. I had the bright and forward-thinking idea to track my progress — both in my bank accounts and in my skills of money management — publicly but anonymously, and by the end of the day I had a new website up and running. You can see what it looked like in 2003, in the graphic below, thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

I’ve told the story a few times before. Here’s my most recent and succinct retelling of how I found myself in grave financial circumstances and, through the help of blogging and later the business that grew from it, improved my financial situation and my life substantially, from a negative net worth a few months before I started writing to a seven-figure net worth today. It’s not just about the money, though. I’ve met lovely people including and especially my girlfriend thanks to this website and the community, and I seem to have grown into a fully-formed adult (after starting the website as a late-model adolescent of 27 years).

I sold this website to a lead generation company called QuinStreet three and a half years ago. It was a good acquisition for the company, as they really wanted to ensure their own advertising was being served to the high-quality search engine traffic from which this website was benefiting. It was a good sale for me, because I saw revenue from search engine traffic as highly volatile and unpredictable, and I was happy to offload that risk for a good price.

After the sale, I became an employee, continuing to write for Consumerism Commentary, manage the blog, and offer consulting on blogging and community building as the company was interested. I negotiated a healthy salary — but six months after the sale, the company determined I was too expensive and laid me off. For some reason that baffles many (sometimes including myself), I offered to continue as a contractor, reducing my consulting role but continuing to manage this website and write occasionally.

The frequency of my writing has dropped off significantly since then, especially in the past couple of months. My “freedom” date was approaching. I had many years to prepare to move on, and I had a plan to do so. As luck would have it, after another reorganization at QuinStreet, I got a call the other day from the new supervisor of QuinStreet’s blogs asking me to reduce my role even further. I declined, choosing instead to move on. I imagine I’ll always be welcome to contribute an article for time to time at QuinStreet’s freelancing rates, but I expect I won’t have much to write here that couldn’t be published elsewhere.

I plan on launching a new financial website soon, and in the mean time, working on The Plutus Awards, the Plutus Foundation, a drum and bugle corps I work with as a volunteer, my photography, and other projects will keep me more than busy. Please follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and my LukeLandes.com website to stay on top of my current projects — and consider reading or joining my new financial website once it is launched.

There was no financial blogging community in 2003 when I started Consumerism Commentary. Today, thousands of blogs cover financial topics from thousands of angles. The community today is one of the most supportive groups I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of. I’m not leaving the community; in fact, I’ll be more involved than ever as I work hard to make The Plutus Awards the premiere event for the community and turn the Foundation into the most important charitable effort for the independent financial media.

The days of an independent financial blogger earning seven figures from advertising are probably over, at least not without an expensive team of professionals helping behind the scenes. I don’t expect any project I work on to be as lucrative as Consumerism Commentary was, but as long as I continue to have passion for financial education, I’ll find a way to express myself and gain something of an audience. I’m not retiring. This isn’t the early retirement everyone promises. I still have much more to do.

From the readers’ perspective, I expect the future of Consumerism Commentary to feature several articles a month from a freelance financial writer.

There was a point earlier at which, had I left Consumerism Commentary, I would have felt bittersweet about the departure. This was my baby; I put my heart and soul and countless hours into writing and working behind the scenes. When I had a day job, I’d come home, eat dinner, and work another eight hours writing for Consumerism Commentary, emailing readers, bloggers, and the “mainstream” media. I put many unpaid hours into building other affiliated sites and projects like the Carnival of Personal Finance, pfblogs.org (the ad-free personal financial blog aggregator), and free hosting for other financial bloggers. This was my life. There are some readers who have been with me since the very beginning. I appreciate that more than anything else. Thank you.

But today, moving on feels like nothing other than the natural course of action.

I wish QuinStreet the best continued success with the website. Thanks for reading.

There’s a good reason I can’t get into extreme savings for retirement. When desperate financial times call for desperate financial measures, there is a good incentive to cut all unnecessary spending and eliminate bad debt. Many people even wait until they hit rock bottom before reforming their approach to their finances, because the effects of bad money management aren’t always clear until they’re completely unavoidable.

After one extreme — complete lack of reasoning and complete lack of understanding consequences — there is a tendency to hit the other extreme. An obsessive spender is just as likely to become an obsessive saver. A little obsession might be good. When I realized I wasn’t saving for my future, I began tracking every cent of income and expense, and it helped me learn where I could cut back my spending and improve my income. It’s an important part of moving your life in the right direction, and I still recommend this to anyone who hasn’t seriously considered their money management skills, particularly those who aren’t left with much net income at the end of the month, if any.

There’s a danger in taking saving too far. Money is more than a number, and you are more than just your net worth. The only point in growing your bank account balances is to use that money for something at some point. Money has no intrinsic meaning; its purpose is only what you can do with it. Although it’s a problem not many will face, it is possible to save too much money.

The government encourage saving decades in advance for retirement by providing tax incentives. It’s a good way to decrease the burden on employers, who at one time offered pensions to assist their employees when they could no longer work. Pensions have all but disappeared in the private sector, replaced by 401(k) plans and IRAs. Preparing for retirement in advance is healthy financial planning, but you still have to consider there is a chance, though remote, that you won’t survive until the end of the saving-for-retirement phase of your life.

It’s a morbid thought, of course, and I wish all Consumerism Commentary readers a long, healthy life. An insurance company may use actuarial tables to determine the chances of any individual living a certain number of additional years, but it’s just an estimation. When we plan for the future we have to assume that the money we invest or save while looking at a time horizon decades in the future will be there when we need it, but we also have to assume that we’ll be there to use it. That’s a lot of assumptions, and putting money away that could be used today is a certain type of risk.

Having a will helps a saver feel comfortable with the fact that if his money outlives him, it will at least see a chance to be used, either by relatives who might save it or by a non-profit organization who can use the funds to move its mission forward. For those who have the means, however, having not completed everything on a “bucket list” could be a regret. Life is almost always shorter than we want it to be, and with many fulfilling activities, many of which require money, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to wait until retirement to do everything.

It’s not a good idea, though, to take this “life is short” mantra and use it as an excuse to spend money with wanton abandon. This is a toxic financial attitude, even though it could be considered the opposite of putting your financial concerns off until the future, another toxic attitude.

While I fully agree that everyone should seize the day in as many opportunities as possible, this approach should be balanced with enough consideration for the future. I don’t think that balance can ever be perfect, though. All anyone can do is make an educated guess, and aim for an approach to finances with which one is comfortable. One that provides a chance for thriving when income from work is no longer a factor while taking advantage of opportunities today for enjoying life.

The good news is that we can enjoy life today while saving for the future. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, although when you’re living paycheck to paycheck or worse, the smart decision is to focus on getting out of that situation and beginning to build wealth as the primary and only priority. Once you are building wealth, you are in a better position to have that flexibility. The frugal approach to life assists with this goal. You can find ways to enjoy life on a budget while keeping the automatic investing plan in full force.

Although I save for retirement to cover myself in the likely event I’ll eventually want to stop working in exchange for money — likely well before I reach the government-suggested age of retirement — I want to make the most of my time today. That doesn’t always require money, but sometimes it does.

I see people putting up with terrible bosses and jobs they don’t like. Life is too short to waste your time in situations that aren’t ideal, or at least moving in that direction. It’s a myth that we need to just accept what we have and be happy when we’re treated poorly at work. When the economy is bad, people are brainwashed into thinking they should be lucky to have any job. Get out and find something better.

Unhappy marriages and personal relationships are similar to bad working situations. Life is too short to spend your life with someone who doesn’t make you happy or to force yourself to spend time with people who don’t share your values. There are seven billion people in the world.

Why waste your time watching television when life is so short? Well, while reading a novel might better flex your neurons, seeking entertainment is a part of enjoying life today, so don’t be too quickly to accept the productivity refrain that mindless entertainment is a waste of time. There may be better ways to be entertained, but life is not worth living if you have to be productive every waking minute of every day — especially if that “productivity” is for the benefit of someone else.

Recognize that life is short and that we might lose our chance to enjoy life if we wait around for retirement or financial independence to start living. We can’t use the fact that life is short as an excuse that prevents good decision-making, which takes the idea to the extreme to the detriment of important goals like saving for the future.

How do you balance the need to plan for your financial future and to achieve financial independence with the need to make use of what you have and enjoy life today? How do you make the most of what is a relatively short life without sacrificing your future? How do you prevent “life is short” from becoming a toxic financial attitude that takes away your ability to save?

It may have been over a year since I last put together a podcast episode, but I’m back today to talk with Consumerism Commentary Podcast guest Carl Richards. Carl is here to talk about his new book, The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money. The author will also be ... Continue reading this article…

When your life is out of control, nothing seems to go right. You have the worst luck, and you can’t seem to get ahead with anything, whether a project, a goal, or even simple things like taking care of daily tasks. Regaining control of your life is imperative. For your finances, you can do that ... Continue reading this article…

After the stock market closed on Friday, my portfolio was at an all-time high. That was likely also the case for a lot of investors living in the United States who are similar to me: earning income, investing in the stock market with a buy-and-hold strategy for the future, and leaving money invested during the ... Continue reading this article…

Banks in the United States are undergoing a major transformation in credit card technology, a process similar to the one Europe successfully completed several years ago. Despite the technological advances in mobile payment that have already rendered plastic cards obsolete, the financial industry wants to replace every magnetic stripe credit card in every wallet. When ... Continue reading this article…

Congratulations to the owners of LearnVest, a financial planning start-up that is in the process of finalizing a deal with Northwestern Mutual wherein the latter will be acquiring the assets and business of the former. In a deal of more than $250 million in cash, a company that provided early funding for the start-up will ... Continue reading this article…

Accumulating money is not a real goal for anyone’s life. Growing wealth is not the point. People don’t work hard because they want to see their bank balance grow; those of us who track our finances and chart our net worth over time aren’t trying to compete in some financial competition. I imagine there are ... Continue reading this article…

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